Tuesday 30 July
6pm - 8pm - Luan Gallery
On Tuesday the 30th of July, the Arts Council in partnership with Westmeath County Arts Office will pay tribute to Athlone native, writer, literary critic and patron of the arts, John Broderick with a celebration on what would have been his 100th birthday.
The event will see the re-publishing of Broderick's seminal book The Waking of Willie Ryan by Lilliput Press, in print and for the first time as an audio book (read by actor Naoise Dunbar), plus the announcement of the 2024 John Broderick Writer In Residence award. We will also be launching a One Town, One Book initiative for Athlone and a new Emerging Writers Bursary.
Dr Michael G Cronin of Maynooth University (Revolutionary Bodies: Homoeroticism and the political imagination in Irish writing) will be speaking at the event. There will be a series of poetry readings from poets including former John Broderick writers-in-Residence Annemarie Ní Churreáin and Keith Payne. Music from multi-instrumentalist Bream / Dylan Ó Muineóg, who will be performing music set to Broderick’s previously unpublished poetry. We will welcome the 2024 John Broderick Writer-in-Residence. Finally, actor Naoise Dunbar will perform a reading from The Waking of Willie Ryan.
Refreshments will be available and guests will be gifted a free copy of the 2024 edition of The Waking of Willie Ryan.
Luan Gallery, Athlone’s contemporary art gallery, is the first purpose-built municipal art gallery located in the midlands of Ireland. The gallery aims to promote a dynamic contemporary visual art programme of both established and emerging artists from Ireland and abroad. The gallery space, designed by Keith Williams Architects has received international accolade for its innovative design. Luan Gallery won ‘The Best Cultural Building in Ireland’ RIAI Award 2013 and the coveted ‘Civic Choice’ Architecture Award 2014. This dedicated art space is located on a spectacular site overlooking the River Shannon adjacent to the town’s historic bridge, the Athlone Castle Visitor Centre and the Catholic Church of St. Peter and St. Paul.
Michael G Cronin is Lecturer in English at Maynooth University. He is the author of: Impure Thoughts: sexuality, Catholicism and literature in twentieth-century Ireland (Manchester University Press, 2013), Sexual/Liberation (Cork UP, 2022) and Revolutionary Bodies: homoeroticism and the political imagination in Irish writing (Manchester UP, 2022; paperback: 2024). The latter was awarded the Robert Rhodes Prize for Best Book on Irish Literature 2023, by the American Conference of Irish Studies.
Eithne Shortall is an author, columnist and occasional broadcaster. She has written five bestselling and internationally published novels. Her debut novel, Love in Row 27, has been translated into nine languages. Grace After Henry (2018) was an international bestseller, won Best Page Turner at the UK’s Big Book Awards and was shortlisted for the Irish Book Awards. Her third novel, Three Little Truths, was selected for BBC Radio Two’s prestigious book club and named the best popular fiction title of the year by the Daily Mail. It Could Never Happen Here, published in 2021, was chosen for RTE television’s Page Turners and named as a favourite book club read.
Eithne is the former chief arts writer and Home editor with the Irish edition of the Sunday Times newspaper. She has also worked as a broadcaster with RTE, BBC and TG4. In 2021, she originated, researched and presented a BBC documentary about the phenomenon of Mills & Boon. She lives in Dublin with her partner and two young children.
Performer bios:
Annemarie Ní Churreáin is a poet from the Donegal Gaeltacht. Her books include Bloodroot (Doire Press, 2017), Town (The Salvage Press, 2018), The Poison Glen (The Gallery Press, 2021) and Ghostgirl (Donegal County Council, 2023). Her books have been shortlisted for the Shine Strong Award for best first collection and The Ledbury Hellens Prize for best second collection. Ní Churreáin is recipient of the Arts Council’s Next Generation Artist Award, The John Broderick Award and a co-recipient of The Markievicz Award. Ní Churreáin has held literary fellowships in the U.S. and throughout Europe. She is the poetry editor at The Stinging Fly magazine.
Keith Payne is the author of nine collections of poetry in translation and original poetry, most recently Building the Boat (Badly Made Books, 2023), as featured on BBC Radio 4’s The Essay. He was John Broderick Writer in Residence 2021- 22, Cork City Eco Poet in Residence 2023, was awarded an Artist in the Community Scheme from Create in 2022 and an Arts Council Literature Bursary in 2022. Awarded an Irish Professor of Poetry Bursary Award in 2016, he curates the Aodh Ruadh Ó Domhnaill Poetry Exchange Ireland/Galicia.
Naoise Dunbar graduated from The Lir Academy in 2020. Since graduating, he has worked with theatre companies like Fishamble and The Abbey Theatre Dublin.
Bream / Dylan Ó Muineóg is a multi-instrumentalist songwriter, performer & event organiser from Wicklow. He's been playing music for over 15 years with various bands and under many names. In 2020 he moved to Brisbane and used this time to delve more into musical theory and composition, and worked with a number of jazz musicians and electronic music producers to make his favourite release to date - Kilramish Philharmonic. He returned home in 2023 and has spent the last year writing and recording his own new material as well as collaborating intensively with guitarist Kelvin Barr and fiddle player Ailish O'Grady for a new project, Bream. Their debut EP is out on July 25th, with a gig that night in The Cobblestone to celebrate.
Dylan Ó Muineóg - Kilramish Philharmonic I.
https://kilramishphilharmonic.bandcamp.com/album/kilramish-philharmonic-i